With millions of consumers snapping up tablets running iOS and Android, Microsoft had high hopes of competing its Windows RT operating system. So far, consumers have yet to fully embrace Windows RT, or Windows 8 for that matter. In fact, many analysts are pointing to Windows 8 as part of the reason for the woes in the computer industry.

A Dell executive recently stated that demand for the company's first Windows RT device, the Dell XPS 10, has been weaker than expected. "Demand is not where I would like it to be at this point in time," Neil Hand, head of Dell's tablet and high-end PC business, told CNET. "The amount of market information about it is not good enough, and the market sentiment is still pretty negative."

Hand also says that the Windows app experience "has not been as strong as it needed to be."

Dell and Hand aren't alone in criticism of Windows RT. Windows RT is the first version of the Windows operating system specifically designed to work with ARM-based processors from NVIDIA, QUALCOMM, and others.

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has also noted that sales of Windows RT devices have been disappointing. Samsung even ditched plans to launch its own Windows RT device in the U.S.

The upside to poor demand for Windows RT tablet for consumers is that weak demand has forced prices down.

The real problem is when someone puts their hands on a ~$150 10" Android tablet and realize that it does everything they can possibly think of to do on a tablet just as well as a Surface or an iPad. At a fraction of the cost.

The vast majority of tablet users in this world get no benefit out of the higher specs of the more expensive stuff.

There's a difference between being able to do something, and a computer being able to do something well (or 'comfortably'). You are "able to" play video games on a TI-83 graphing calculator. Still, you buy a PlayStation 3 anyway.

A 10'' Android tablet someone would actually want would be more like $400. Coincidentally, that's about the sweet spot Clover Trail devices should be targeting. Long story short, this is not exactly an open-and-shut case.

None of those things are going to tax even the cheapest Android tablet. Hence, if you have an average person do those things on a $150 Android tablet, then on a Surface, then on an iPad...they're not going to be able to tell the difference. The cheap Android tablet does everything just as well (or as comfortably) as the more expensive tablets, from the average person's persepctive.

And no...you're not an "average person" - by the very notion that you have the slightest idea what "Clover Trail" even is. Let alone that it exists.

I hate to be mean about this, but you're absolutely delusional if you think someone is not going to be able to tell the difference in user experience between a $150 tablet and a $400 tablet. I mean, let's not get crazy here.

The Galaxy S2 could do everything the Galaxy S3 did, but the S3 moved 5000% more units because the S3 had a far nicer user experience. And no, it wasn't just software updates that did it. Just 'being able' to do something isn't the whole story.

Your list isn't real life because people will do what a tablet allows them to do. If they could buy a $600 tablet that let's them play Ultra HD VR Grand Theft Auto 8 and fly to outer space, no one would be able to keep them on the shelves.

An important example of this is Microsoft Office. You think the average person doesn't want to use Word and Excel? PowerPoint? Well, yes, they do. You can't do that on a $150 tablet. You can't do anything like that on a $150 tablet. Kingsoft Office is actually pretty sweet, but one thing it is NOT is an MS Office killer, and your $150 tablet does not have a desktop dock.

You're jumping the gun here. This tech isn't that powerful yet. In time $150 will be 'good enough.' Today is not that day.

This I'll agree with. Windows 8 ARM should never have gone to market in the first place. My problem with the "$150 tablets are all you ever need" argument is that the experience on (today's) $150 tablets are garbage even to the 'layperson,' and for less than $500 you can get tablet with 'full' Windows 8 on it. The performance is respectable, and in a few months they'll have faster clocks and faster RAM.

The 4 things I listed above are all the vast majority of people can even think of to do on a tablet. And we've shown many times that my wife's $150 Android tablet does those things exactly as fast as iPads and more expensive tablets. It makes no difference.

And no - the average person is categorically NOT going to play GTA on their tablet. The % of consumers that would even consider such a thing is so tiny as to not matter.

And also no on needing Office on a tablet. People don't do that...not average people. If they need to do something in Word or Excel they're going to switch to their laptop or desktop. Never mind the fact that ALL Android tablets can convert into a laptop, essentially, with a $15 keyboard/folder accessory from Amazon.

- The GTA example was "Ultra HD VR," meaning the user would be visually surrounded by a high-resolution image, not looking at a tablet screen. I believe you missed the point.

- I mentioned Office because people seem to keep forgetting that a computer is a computer. A tablet is a computer. If your tablet can't do what your desktop can do, it's because your tablet just isn't good enough to. Point blank. When the technology becomes sufficiently advanced enough (not that it is or isn't at this moment), there will be no reason to differentiate between what you "can" do on one platform or another.

1. The $150 tablet works fine on those websites. You don't get to pretend it doesn't.

2. I don't care what it was - anyone wanting to play GTA isn't an average tablet consumer. You've missed the point.

3. Yes, a tablet is a computer. But firstly, people already have laptops and desktops with Office on them, will full-size keyboards and mice, and they tend to use those for actual productivity. Even with a keyboard, any tablet is pretty subpar for creating anything. Tablets are primarily consumption devices. So whether or not Microsoft Office in and of itself is available on Android is pretty much a non-starter. People don't care. That's not what they're buying a tablet for.

3a. Those $15 keyboard folders are wildly popular, and I've had my hands on a few of them myself. You can try to "fool" anyone you want to with your uninformed stupidity, but considering the things cost $15, the fact of the matter is that the prop the tablet up like a laptop and the keyboard works as advertised. If you don't like the $15 folder keyboard, then don't buy one - or buy something else that you think is reassuringly expensive. Your opinion is of no value.

Just surfing the web can show a difference between tablets. My first tablet was a Nook, and it just was too slow for me to enjoy it, even doing simple things like browsing the web. I had rooted it, installed CynogenMod, and even overclocked it. I was able to sell it for more than I paid for it (the rooting of it added value) and I bought an iPad, and felt the price difference was well worth it.

Nowadays, there are certainly good tablets cheaper than the iPad, but I couldn't recommend anything at the $150 level yet.

We've done "taste tests" several times with our $150 Android tablet side-by-side with iPads and more expensive devices, like Transformers.

Web surfing speed is subjectively the same. Maybe you can come up with differentiation on some kind of benchmark, but it won't make any difference in usability. I can't speak about the Nook...I never even laid eyes on one.

It's kind of like trying to convince my mom that she should spend $1500 on a big-ass gaming rig PC like I have. The thing is, is my mom used my PC to check her email do Facebook, and play Angry Birds, the 6-core CPU, 16Gb of RAM, Radeon 7850 GPU and SSD aren't going to make the slightest difference. All the things she does happen just as fast on a 10-year old Windows XP machine from the bottom bin at Walmart.

man, you're talking to the mototroll, and the motoroll doesn't know what experience means, the mototroll is the kind of guy who sees no difference between maybach, bugatti, tesla, ford and chevrolet, for him if he can buy chevrolet for 10k why buy maybach or something more expensive? there's no difference between 10k chevrolet and 100k tesla for him. you can try to tell him there is a difference between them and he always tells you you're wrong. you will get smarter answers from a piece of wood than form him, trust me on that, I've been through these conversations with him so many times I lost the count ;)

My comment is anecdotal, but the super cheap Android tablets I'm familiar with (through online sales) have had exceptionally poor satisfaction rates. As in, almost everyone who purchased one deeply regretted it, to the point where it adversely affected the average satisfaction scores for the entire site.

Where tablets are concerned, it seems to be advisable to stick with name brands and price points around $300 (10-inch) and $200 (7-inch).

1. That's a "promise." How many promises have been made by the likes of Intel that never happened?

2. No mention of the size or form factor of such devices. Maybe he's talking about a 7" tablet for $200. Yay. Doesn't change the base arguments here when the 10" Android tablet is $150.

3. Even if the size were the same - if he's promising a 10" Surface tablet for $200, that's still 33% more expensive than the $150 Android tablet at the same price. Granted, the price premium sucks a lot less at that point - but it still sucks.

You can insist that the spec sheet for the Surface is more impressive than the cheap Android tablet. Probably is. You can insist that it's a "Ferrari" compared to a "Taurus." That might be valid too. But if grandma is the one who needs the car, and all she's going to use it for is to drive to the corner store for groceries, what good did it do her to spend more money on the Ferrari instead of saving a lot of money and getting the Taurus?

Nope. I've argued elsewhere that there is a market for convertibles - nothing I've said here contradicts that.

There is a market for powerful tablets. A very small one.

The largest market is for inexpensive tablets, because the vast majority of people have no need for great power in a tablet.

My argument is rock-solid. You can either poke your head out of your hole and look at the real world and realize this to be true, or you can continue to pretend you live in a different world. Which is fine by me.

But the $100~150 tablets tend to be garbage... cheap screen, with high failure rates. Bad touch sensors, weak and small batteries with limited power usage and life-span. 2+ year old SOC/CPU designs and performance.

Apple is not having problems selling $300 8" tablet or the $400~500 10" types.

The MS Surface is a quality product... mostly. Even thou its screen is out-dated. The Surface should be a $300 product.

Microsoft's best chance to save RT would have been to sell the SurfaceRT for $200 (pretty much at costs) to create buzz. of course that pisses of their partners who would have a $280~300 build costs.

On Newegg, they have dozens of 7" tablets for $70~120, most have little or low ratings, low resolutions (800x480). Limited memory with 512mb~4GB. once you hit about $150~200, you get ASUS and Lenovo, etc.

I've seen and used a large number of the cheap Android tablets. Have never seen one that didn't work well, and with which the user wasn't happy. They get even more happy when you do the "test drive" thing where you find a guy with an iPad and/or Transformer, Surface, whatever else, and have everybody do the basic things that people actually do on tablets side-by-side.

Then the people with the inexpensive Android things feel even better about their purchases, while the people with the iPads et al just get mad and go away.

Everyone I've seen, with the exception of one, has loved their cheap Android tablet right out of the box. One person said their initial one was wonky, so it got replaced and the replacement is perfectly fine.

I'm under the impression that only nerds are leaving feedback for such things on Newegg etc. Whining about things that normal people don't have any interest in.

When it comes right down to it, the cheap, no-name Android tablets are just as good as anything else for web surfing, email, Facebook and Angry Birds. And that's all the vast majority of people care to do on a tablet.